“Why don’t you just paint the portraits, why do you use the gel plate.” I get this question a lot. The short answer – I’ve always been drawn to printmaking, I like the surface look, feel & texture of the final pull. The long-answer, I wanted to see how far I could push the gel plate and challenge my creative process (you really have to think differently to paint in reverse & backward). You can see my process here (love it if you’d also leave a review and subscribe to my YouTube channel!)
A little background, the gel plate is just that a plate made with gelatin. It’s highly versatile & can be used to create final prints, inputs for mixed media, collage paper, and covered with paint and smacked on an existing work, book, etc. to transfer the image. You can YouTube gel or gelli printing and see the wide variety of applications.
I discovered the gel plate in December 2022 while doing a Zoom art session with my niece. Once I tried it there was no looking back. Early on I challenged myself to create portraits, initially a series of five 8×10 images for each subject; lately (examples: Daniel and My Mom), I’m focusing on getting a single larger 14×12. Although the paint application varies, the process starts with an image that I transfer to the plate followed by application of acrylic paint.
When I’m done with a series (or something else I’m doing on the gel plate) I’ll experiment with the leftover paint on the palette by creating freehand faces. I call these my “grotesques” and use them to test out color combinations, textures, layering, paint application, and seeing how far I can push the image. They are a lot of fun, and you can see the variety of results from the examples below:
